A few months ago I was enjoying a night of dining and
drinking with a bunch of people I work with. One of these people, who is in the
process of learning about me, though who knows I’m trans, was chatting with me.
During the course of the conversation, I said something that I can’t even remember
now, but whatever I said sort of took him aback. His response to my comment was
a sentiment that I’ve heard thrown at me quite often, especially over the past
few years. Basically what he said was…
“You’re one of those people aren’t you? You’re just….special. You’re an extremely good
person who goes out of their way to be nice and respectful to everyone. I know
so few people like you, that when I meet someone like you, I’m always amazed.”
And despite the fact that this is a wonderful thing to hear,
I essentially shrugged it off.
This is because I knew what he said was true (well, with the
exception that I always thought there were more people like this in the world
than he made it out to be… though perhaps that’s just his experience). I also
knew that people saw this kind of “specialness” (for lack of a better term) in
me, because people have a tendency to tell me about it. I’ve been told
something similar to this dozens of times, because apparently I have a “really good
energy” about me or something.
Anyway, after he said this, he essentially continued with, “I
especially don’t know how you do it,
because if I was in your situation (read: trans), I would be mad at the entire
world and wouldn’t know how to hold it back. So the fact that you’re exceedingly
nice astounds me.”
Again, I shrugged this off, because, at the time, I thought
to myself, What does being mean, angry,
and mad do? It’s not going to change the situation, and it would really only
make things worse. And while what this person said has stuck me with
(obviously, since I’m writing about it), it’s not something I thought much
about since then. Well, not until recently anyway.
The first time I admitted to having any trans-fueled
feelings to someone was in 1998. I started hormones in 2005. And through all
that time, while I have made great strides in the process of accepting myself
and moving forward with this snail’s-pace crusade, the way I live now is STILL
a lie. And even though the people closest to me—and perhaps even ALL my family
and friends at this point—know that I’m trans (an achievement in and of
itself), I STILL live a lie.
One of the gigantic reasons for this is because I have a severe
issue with how I look. I struggle incredibly with my appearance. Actually, to
be completely honest, I loathe my
appearance… and I find it impossible to try to be true to myself while feeling
the way I do about how I look, as I appear NOWHERE close to who I actually am.
My appearance, or more specifically my feelings about my
appearance, holds me back in a MAJOR way and keeps me from publically jumping
from the Male side of the fence to the Female side… which is something I desperately
need to do. I’ve been saving money for years to try to address this in any way
I can, and recently I thought I had FINALLY scraped enough together to make a good,
solid push to address it so that I can FINALLY feel more confident about
moving forward in this process… and, you know, just feel better about the everyday
action of looking into a mirror.
So what I want to do (and have wanted to do since I first
came to this I-am-trans conclusion) is have surgery on my face to feminize it, to
make me feel better about looking at myself, and to help me make the huge and
scary-as-hell step of entering the world in a way that is more representative of
the person I am. (Though the thought of surgery certainly is frightening to me,
but that’s a topic for a different post.)
After exploring what surgeries were available and how they
could help me, I reached out to a surgeon, who is apparently excellent at this
kind of work, and I had a good consultation. The next day his office sent me an
estimated cost of the surgery. That cost was $28,000.
As I’ve mentioned, I have been saving for years to try to
get the money together for this, but this price was FAR more than I expected it
to be, and it sent me spiraling into a wild exploration of my options and what
I could do to make this happen as soon as possible.
And, let me be clear when I say this, I need this to happen as soon as possible. This is because the way I’m
living my life now has simply become agonizing. Every day I’m forced to endure
living like this, and all the badness that comes along with not being your true
self to pretty much anyone, is excruciating. To think of doing it for even another
year is unbearable. To think of suffering it longer than that… well, that’s
when I start thinking about giving up on everything and just yanking the power
cord out on my life.
Yes, it is THAT painful, and destructive, and maddening. This
is why trans people are so disproportionally self-harming. This is why over
FORTY PERCENT of trans people attempt to kill themselves. Whatever you think
about this situation, please keep in mind that the feelings associated with it can
be THAT horrendous.
On top of this, I’m overwhelmed by bitterness that I need to
spend THAT amount of money in an attempt to physically get myself to the point
where I feel I somewhat coincide with who I am mentally, which is something
that 99.9% of the population doesn’t need to even think about. (Though I do
realize that people who aren’t trans experience body issues, and image issues,
and all of that awful stuff. I’m coming at this purely from the whole contending-with-being-the-wrong-gender
standpoint here.)
Despite all of this, I have recently been exploring options
that basically boil down to taking a loan or using some crazy combination of
credit cards just so I can get through THIS part of it. And I will say that
while I make a decent salary, I would barely make enough to cover the not-at-all-extravagant
expenses I generate now if you throw another huge monthly payment on top of it.
Still, if this was just for a few years, I could tighten my
belt for this time and I’m sure I could navigate my way through it. The
additional issue, however, is that this is just the first surgery for me, and
the other surgery… the bottom surgery… is something that I also need to have as
soon as I possibly can, because every day I feel wrong is another day that
erodes at my will to go on. This surgery can cost up to $20,000, and I would
then have to save for that, which I wouldn’t be able to do if I took a loan or
credit card payment for this first round of surgery, because I would have exactly
zero extra money to put away with the massive monthly payment the first round
of surgery would rain down on me.
All of this, combined with a bunch of other factors in my
life right now, are a swirling mass of stress and pain that surrounds me. And
that stress and pain was insanely exacerbated when I finally got the strength
and resolve to try to address this, and then just hit massive roadblocks that I
don’t know how to navigate around.
The past few weeks have been a tornado of awfulness, and it’s
certainly started to affect this nice, respectful person that was
referred to at the beginning of this post. Because this pain is transforming me
into a sullen, bitter, spiteful, hurtful, terrible person.
I’m an ardent believer that people have a good nature, and
that when you see people acting in awful ways, it’s due to a pain they’re
experiencing… either due to the fact that the pain makes them focus on
themselves so much that they can’t see past it to see how they affect others,
that this pain fosters anger in people and then they take that anger out on
those that surround them, or the pain makes them so bitter that they just stop
caring about anything and anyone.
This is the road I can feel myself getting pulled down. This
once always-good person is now finding that I’m careening towards being someone
who is so engulfed with bad that I am now taking it out on the people around
me. I am not at all pleasant to be around. I can’t sleep at night. I can’t
steer out of destructive behaviors, and I truly fear where all of this is
leading me. I don’t know how to address it and I don’t know how to make it
right.
I’m am trying, though… at least for now. Though, because of everything
I described above, I had an EPIC meltdown over the past weekend that literally
left me gasping for air. For someone who has undergone their share of stress
and panic attacks, this is the worst that I have ever felt, and I am not
exaggerating when I say that for a while I was keeled over in tear-ridden agony, uncontrollably
shaking, nauseous, and hyperventilating, and then spent 24 hours in and out of overpowering
crying fits and ugly tears, like to the point that I was amazed that someone
could cry that much. And to top all of this off, also mixed into that 24-hour
period was an insanely nasty fight between me and someone who I considered to
be my best friend.
So, you know, life has been a cavalcade of fun for me
lately.
All that said, I feel that 24-hour span was my rock bottom, and when
you hit rock bottom, oftentimes you get a bounce, and with that bounce comes a
much-needed catharsis that can clear your head and give you the resolve to move
on with a little less burden, because you cleansed so much of that bad emotion
from you through tears, and painful howling, and having most of your brain
functions shut down just so you can process everything that’s screaming at you
through all of these horrific feelings.
And so I try to find a way to muster on through this. I try
to find a way to resolve these issues… but, that said, I feel like I’m doing so
as a lesser version of myself, and as someone who has a festering overload of
hurt and bitterness that forces me to not be nearly as good as I want to be to
the people I come into contact with and to the people I’m closest to.
So, you may now be wondering, “Okay, emo kid, do you feel good
that you dumped this mountain of shit on us?”
Well, no, of course I don’t, though one of the reasons I
decided to write and post this was to try to find some sort of clarity and
strength through writing about it and getting these thoughts out of my head and
on “paper”. I also put this together to show just how much of a picnic this whole
trans experience can be (since, you know, that is what this blog is about)… and
yet all I continue to hear from certain people is that we’re dangerous because
OH MY GOD THE CHILDRENZ IN THE RESTROOOMZ!!!111! (Again, a topic for another
post.)
Lastly here, I wrote this as an attempt to tell people that
one person’s pain is all of our pain. When someone is hurting, if affects them
and their behavior, and will affect those that surround them. If you could make
someone’s pain less, everyone’s interactions with them become better, as they
become a better version of themselves. So I implore people to reach out and
help others with their pain as much as they can, because in doing so you are
truly improving someone’s life, and in turn, making this world a better place.
One day soon I hope I can again be the kind of person that my friend from work
described above, because right now, I feel as far from that person as I can
possibly get.
All of this said, I’m actually going to leave you on a
positive note.
In the time since this magnificent meltdown, I did indeed
get that hitting-rock-bottom bounce that I mentioned above. Since then, I called
about getting back into therapy, I reached out to someone about a trans support
group (that I plan on attending next week), and, oh look, I’m actually writing
again, which is something that has provided great solace to me in the past,
though something I’ve steered away from over the last few years because I work
as a writer, and with that being the case, sometimes the last thing I want to
do when I get home after a long day is write for myself. I’m currently
re-realizing just how helpful this can be, though, and I already have more writing
ideas that I’m working on, which is good.
On top of all this, I have gotten some amazing support, care,
and love from friends who realize the severity of what I’m currently going
through, and I am insanely grateful for this and for them. Again, nothing but
good.
While I am still not entirely well right now and still a lesser
version of myself because of what I’m contending with, what I’m trying to get
through, and the pain that this is causing me, through all of that I wish much
love and nothing but the best to you all.
